Constructing CoRes—a Strategy for Building PCK in Pre-service Science Teacher Education

This paper presents findings from an exploratory study into a science teacher education initiative that seeks to build the foundations on which novice teachers can begin developing their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The initiative involved the use of Content Representations (CoRes), which were originally developed as part of a strategy for exploring and gaining insights into the PCK of expert science teachers. As the student teachers explored existing CoRes the course lecturer saw potential for more effectively developing their PCK through engaging them in constructing their own CoRes for new topics. When given the opportunity, student teachers found the task challenging and their lack of classroom experience and experimentation proved to be a limiting factor. However, the contribution such a task could make to their future PCK development remained a distinct possibility in the lecturer’s view. In the following year she carefully scaffolded the learning prior to CoRe construction such that the student teachers could more readily access relevant knowledge when attempting such a task. Their resultant CoRes and comments indicate that with appropriate and timely scaffolding the process of CoRe construction does have the potential for PCK development for novice teachers.